Читать книгу: «Santa's Playbook»

Chapter One

Today would have been his sixteenth anniversary.

Only half hearing the kids’ thudding and slamming and yelling from downstairs, Ethan Noble glanced out his bedroom window, where a pair of chattering squirrels chased each other through an oak tree, the bare branches thickly webbed against a pale November sky. It’d been cold and windy that day, too, the mottled clouds occasionally spitting on everybody’s windshields as they made their way to All Saints.

But nobody’d cared. About the weather, about the indisputable fact that Merri’s stomach bulged a little underneath her high-waisted wedding dress. So things’d happened slightly out of order. Since it’d all worked out like they’d always planned anyway, what difference did it make—?

His cell buzzed—an incoming text message. Only one person who’d call this early. And for only one reason. Ethan scooped the phone off his nightstand.

Thinking of you.

If anyone would understand what he was feeling today it’d be the man who’d adopted Ethan when he was a toddler. Also a widower for some years now, Preston Noble had set an example of strength and loyalty and fairness that Ethan could only hope to emulate, especially as a parent. And his father had adored Merri....

God, she’d been beautiful. And so fricking happy. Same as he’d been, even if Juliette’s precipitous appearance hadn’t been in the playbook. Merri, though... She’d been a part of his playbook since they were fifteen.

Juliette’s age, he thought as his daughter appeared in the doorway, her wavy, warm brown hair streaked with some god-awful color. At least it was only chalk, it washed out, but still. Lime-green?

“Um...the others had breakfast, sorta. Cereal, anyway. So...I’m ready to go—?”

“Sure,” Ethan said, smiling. “We’re good.”

Jules came over, standing on tiptoe to give him a hug, a peck on his scratchy cheek. Shaving was strictly optional on the weekends. Then she released him, eyes full of concern, and Ethan’s stung. He didn’t make an issue of the anniversary, so the younger kids were oblivious. But Jules... She knew. In fact, she already had her eye on Merri’s wedding dress, packed up safe in the special heirloom box in Ethan’s closet. Never mind she was already three inches taller than her mother.

“You know, I don’t have to go—”

“It’s only another Saturday, honey. So get outta here,” he said in an exaggerated Jersey accent. “Do your mom proud, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and started off, only to spin around at the door. “I’ll do a real breakfast when I get back. How’s that?”

“Whatever,” Ethan said, loving her so much it hurt. And not only because she was the spitting image of Merri, except for her eyes, more green-blue than purple-blue. But because he’d look at her and think, How’d I luck out to get one this good?

Unlike the twins, he thought on a brief chuckle as the boys bellowed downstairs. Then Isabella had arrived, a surprise after a six-year dry spell, to more than outshine her brothers in the Tasmanian devil department—

Briefly, resentment stabbed that his youngest daughter would never know her mother.

But like always, he shrugged off the memories, the self-pity and anger and—even after all this time—the disbelief as he slowly descended the stairs, his palm lightly raking the dark wood banister’s numerous dings and gouges that long preceded his and Merri’s buying the house four blocks from the high school, right after the twins were born. At the bottom he flexed his knee, willing the ache to subside: coaching peewee football was a lot more physical than high school varsity.